Behemoth Droppings

Well, ever since we got the Nintendo DS my favorite game has been The Legend of Zelda – The Minish Cap. The graphics aren’t near as good as the DS games, but this game is just flat out fun. For a Nintendo Advanced game, it is quite challenging and long. Of course, what Zelda game hasn’t been challenging? Along with several new items, the game includes a microscopic view of Hyrule. For quite a bit of the game, you shrink to a very small size and go places that are not accessible or even visible when full size. There are a few places that I got stuck on, and had to look up on the internet where I needed to go next. I would definitely recommend anyone with a Nintendo DS or Nintendo Advanced to go out and get this game. It is a lot of fun and will keep you occupied for quite a few hours.

Just thought I’d let everyone know I’d be gone for the Easter weekend. Leslie and I are heading down to London to be with my family for Easter. I thought I’d let everyone know there is a reason this time for me not posting anything. So have a great Easter!!

I’ve been meaning to post this for a few days, but I just kept procrastinating. Anyway, I have to say a big congratulations to South Laurel High School. Their basketball team won the state championship this year by beating Warren Central 72-59. Even though I went to North Laurel, it’s still good to see a hometown team win the championship. I have a link to the article below. I think it’s awesome that the MVP of the tournament Walt Allen, his coach Steve Wright, and another teamate Eric Fields went to Romania last summer on a mission trip. While there, Allen promised Coach Wright that he would get them to the state championship. Another article I saw quoted Allen as saying that whether they (South Laurel) won or lost, he would still be at church the next morning.

South Laurel High School – KHSAA State Champions

[Update: I thought I would let you know that the tournament is not broken up by the size of the school. In Kentucky, there is only one champion for all the high schools in the state. There seemed to be some confusion about this when I was telling people at work, so I thought I would clarify.]

The UK vs UC game just finished, and man-oh-man was it a game. I have to give it to Cincinnati. They played a good game, but Kentucky was just too solid. Kentucky played an all around good game. They rebounded better than I’ve seen them rebound in a while, and they absolutely dominated inside the paint on offense. Rajon Rondo proved again that he is going to be the best point guard that UK has seen in a long time. I did learn something about UC, though. They live and die by how Jihad Muhammed plays. While he was hitting his shots, UC was giving UK everything they wanted. But as soon as he went cold, UC just didn’t seem to have quite enough to stay with UK. You have to acknowledge Patrick Sparks for his game as well. I’ve been one of his bigger critics the past few games, but he came out playing excellent. He was a little bit of a liability on defense as the person he was guarding seemed to drive by him on several occasions, but overall he played an excellent game. Also, Randolf Morris proved why he is going to be a center point for the next few years of UK basketball. He made some huge defensive plays and even bigger rebounds. He was also a huge nuissance for UC as Chuck Hayes just lobbed him the ball on several occasions for the easy jam. And yet again, Chuck Hayes just did it all!!! Keep up the good work, and GO UK!!

Well, today is probably one of the most overlooked holidays (except for the people who use it as an excuse to drink green beer) of the year. Here’s a question for ya. Do you know the real reason behind St. Patrick’s Day? It’s not because he drove snakes out of Ireland with a shamrock, or anything like that. The real reason is because he followed what God wanted him to do, and brought Christianity to a whole country. When St. Patrick was a teenager, before he was St. Patrick, he lived in what is now Great Britain. He was kidnapped by a group of mauraders from Ireland, and taken back as a slave. He spent several years there as a slave before he was able to escape back to his home land. Several years later he returned to Ireland, though not as a slave. He returned because he was answering God’s call. God wanted him to go back and witness to his once captors, and show them the Love and Glory of God. Through his dedication, many people came to know God. What St. Patrick’s day should be to us is a reminder of how, if we are willing, God can use one person in ways far greater than we can imagine. So happy St. Patrick’s Day.

Well, it’s that time of year again. The time for office pools, chearing your team on, crying when they loose, and saying “wait until next year”. Yep, it’s March Madness. I went a little crazy with some of my picks this year. I usually do so poorly anyway, I figured it would be fun to try and pick a few upsets. I have Oklahoma State, Louisville, Florida, and Kentucky in the final four with UL and UK playing for the championship. Of course I picked UK to win, unlike some other fans *cough*Chris*cough*. I don’t expect the final four to look like this, but I thought it would be fun. Ya never know, it could happen. Anyway, here’s my bracket:

It looks the way it does because I cannot use my scanner yet with Windows XP 64. There’s still no driver for it, so I had to take a picture of it.

Well, I finally took the plunge and downloaded the beta version of Windows XP 64-bit. Man, has it been a hassel. Drivers are few and far between. My motherboard is an Asus K8V Deluxe, and it has a built in ethernet lan card. It is a 3com 3c940 gigabit ethernet adapter. The problem is that Windows 64 doesn’t come with 64-bit drivers for it. So as soon as I finished installing it, I couldn’t get on the internet. That caused more problems because I needed to get graphic and sound drivers, among other things. I borrowed a friends labtop (thanks Matt) and finally found a driver that was supposed to work, but it didn’t. After doing a little more research, I found out why. I had to make a few changes to the driver to get it working. I finally got it fixed, and was able to download my video and audio drivers. The video works fine, but the audio driver doesn’t let me use my surround sound speakers. But at least I have sound.

I thought I was doing good and started working on re-installing some of the old software. Guess what, not all 32-bit software work on the 64-bit system even though it is supposed to be backwards compatible. To make a long story short I still can’t use my printer, scanner, or TV Wonder capture card. And if someone would like to purchase Norton’s 2005 for cheap, let me know (yep, Nortons doesn’t run on a 64-bit OS). I did find a pretty good antivirus program called Avast that works on my system, so that’s good. Anyway, Microsoft needs to hurry up and release the final version, so hardware companies will release better drivers. If someone does happen across my site and wants the driver for the 3com lan card, here it is:

3com 3c940 Ethernet Lan Driver for Windows XP 64

[Update: I know have my printer printing in black and white, but not color. Hopefully they will get those drivers out soon!]

Just thought I’d let everyone know I have some more pictures of our house up.

You probably noticed my website was down for a few days. Well, it came time to renew my subscription and domain name a few days ago, and the company hosting my site was supposed to renew my subscription and my domain name automatically. They had some problems, and to make a long story short they forgot to renew my domain name. As soon as they renewed it, it came back up. There shouldn’t be any more problems.

I found a great article about how Wisconsin is trying to pass a law that would classify feral felines as game and they could be hunted. I’m sure everybody knows how I feel about cats (sorry Chris), so naturally I think this is great idea. Domestic cats are excellent predators. When people kick them out, or let them roam free, they really do damage to the natural wildlife. Anything from rabbits to birds, and everything in between, are fair game for cats. This will help keep them in check and keep the other wildlife from getting destroyed. I’m sure that most of the people who post on here will completely disagree with me on this one. Here’s the article:

Open season on cats in Wisconsin?